1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and an apparatus for processing data using a plurality of functions.
2. Description of the Related Art
Application specific integrated circuits (ASICs) have been used to process data, especially, image data. In data processing using the ASIC, a data-processing algorithm is closely related to the software structure or the hardware structure that executes the algorithm. In some data-processing apparatuses including the ASIC, the hardware and the software are designed in combined with each other so that data-processing functions are performed in a predetermined order. Such designs make it difficult to flexibly change the data-processing algorithm. Moreover, changes of the data processing algorithm make the internal structure of the data processing apparatuses complicated, which causes various difficulties in developing or improving an image-data processing apparatus or in providing advanced services.
To solve the above problems, Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2001-118050 discloses a technology for obtaining desired image data by processing original image data using a plurality of image-data processing units in a sequential manner, or obtaining desired image data by selecting, in response to a request, target image-data processing units corresponding to the request, and processing original image data using the target image-data processing units in the sequential manner.
In the above conventional technology, an order of the image-data processing units to be performed can be changed flexibly by selecting the target image-data processing units corresponding to the request and causing the target image-data processing units to process the data in the sequential manner.
However, more and more complicated data processing have been required, recently. In the above conventional technology, resources are reserved sequentially and the reserved resources are sequentially executed. The next process starts when resources for the current process are released. In other words, the resources are releases at the end of each process. This makes it difficult to perform flexible control suitable for the complicated data-processing and hardware specifications. It is required to provide an advanced data-processing apparatus to improve processing performances.